Charles DeLano Hine

“ Some big, strong railroad men are coming to the front who will improve these conditions by working from a broader viewpoint. We need more brainy men with nerve enough to stand up and insist upon a consideration of the welfare of our properties ten, twenty or fifty years hence. Because we need them they will be developed.
Now do not hand me the old song and dance about business being cold-blooded and devoid of sentiment. We spend money directly and indirectly for advertising with a view to fostering public sentiment in favor of our line. ”

“ Time, even a short period, brings a sacredness to all things. If we make a so-called better showing on paper than a twelvemonth previous, we shake hands with ourselves and forget how rotten we were considered just one short year ago. The ball team that wins the championship and takes the big gate receipts is the one whose members play for the side rather than for high individual averages. ”

“ If in April and May we have a lot of ties on hand, we may not be allowed to put them in the track because they will be charged out before June 30, and make too heavy a showing of expenditure for the fiscal year. So, with labor comparatively plentiful and the weather comfortable, we wait until the new fiscal year comes in, until the sun shines hottest on the track. Then, with farmers paying harvest wages we have to offer more money. If we get the extra men the heat lessens their efficiency. ”

“ If our crops were short we did not starve our work horses. We sometimes found it paid, even with a poor crop in sight, to go to the bank and borrow rather than neglect the ditching in a wet field. If we made some surplus money we did not blow it all in for tools and improvements. We knew that the inevitable lean years preclude throwing the fat in the fire. ”

“ In the winter he may lay them off, but this is for a period sufficiently long and sufficiently definite to enable the farm hand to become something else, say a wood chopper or a lumberman. Can we expect our car repairers, our sectionmen, to be loyal and faithful if we lay them off with necessary work in sight, simply to make our books look better? They know that later on we shall, at the last minute, at the scratch of an indefinite somebody’s pen, put on a big force and with a hurrah, boys, rush it through. ”

“ There is a responsibility here which we cannot shirk.
Cutting down expenses has been done in an unintelligent, cold-blooded sort of a way. We go home at night feeling good at having cut down our payrolls. ”

“ In the play of economic forces the weak have to suffer. I believe, though, that through minimizing such suffering we can improve the service and earn bigger dividends for our stockholders. Each of us can do a little; all of us together can do a great deal toward making the problems easier. ”

“ Some kinds of fertilizers on the farm are said to make rich fathers and poor sons. The way some railroads have been run for a record you would imagine that race suicide had reached a point where no further generations were expected. One of the gravest of our mistakes has been the application of the comparative statement, regardless of its effect upon our men. The farmer finds it wise and economical to arrange work for several monthly men in order to minimize the number of day hands for his rush seasons. ”

“ Business comes from an increase in population, from development of resources, from the growing sentiments of the human race. Life owes its origin to love, which originates in sentiment. The family, directly traceable to sentiment, is the unit of civilization. ”

“ The little matters of failure to utilize the full life of the tie, of interest on the money invested, we dismiss with the thought that trifling losses must be expected in the conduct of large affairs. ”

“ We should be feeling sorry at the necessity for taking from men the wherewithal to pay the unceasing rent and grocery bills. Our methods give some room for the populists’ plea to put the man above the dollar. ”

“ No, he is in a different department. An official or a foreman might be put to the inconvenience of waiting a few days, of breaking in a new man. Next spring there might have to be a readjustment when the work trains go on. ”